What should I learn first when I start learning Chinese?

Chinese, is known by several names, simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語; pinyin: Hànyǔ or also 中文; Zhōngwén, especially for the written language. Most linguists classify all of the variations of spoken Chinese that form the Sinitic branch as the Sino-Tibetan language family (spoken by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China) and believe that there was an original language, called Proto-Sino-Tibetan, similar to Proto Indo-European, from which the Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages descended. With about 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the world’s population) speaking a variety of Chinese as their first language, the most common language in China is Standard Chinese. China is one of the most linguistically diverse countries in the world. There are more than 70 million people belonging to 55 different national minorities living in China, and while each minority has their own spoken language, many minority groups do not have any distinguishable written form for their languages. While the prevalence of Mandarin throughout northern China is largely the result of geography, namely the plains of north China, the presence of Mandarin in Sichuan is largely due to a plague in the 12th century, which may have been related to the Black Death, depopulating the area, leading to later settlement from north China. The Chinese language is the oldest written language in the world with at least six thousand years of history.

Chinese is notoriously intimidating to many learners. Many individuals claim it to be one of the toughest languages to master. It is also important to remember that the starting point and opting the right method to learn the language, are two key players as to how tough or easy the language learning journey is going to be. Therefore, I believe it is important you start with the alphabets and a few common phrases as these would help you build a stronger foundation.  Chinese uses written characters that are known as 漢字 [汉>字] (hànzi). While Chinese characters are often thought of as extremely complex, on the contrary, they are all derived from a couple hundred simple pictographs and ideographs that are assembled in different combinations. Once you get the hang of them, they aren’t as difficult to remember as you may think. The first Chinese characters were simple objects like “human”, “hand”, “foot”, “mountain”, “sun”, “moon”, and “tree”. Then, logical combinations of the simple characters followed. Some of these simple characters and logical combinations within the character still remain clear enough to see what they depict. When it comes to basic phrases, start simple like greetings and apologies, then advance to gratitude and phrases that help you initiate or participate in a conversation.

While Chinese can intimidate many learners, it is important to keep in mind that the ease or difficulty of mastering a language truly depends on the student themselves. Chinese simply expects you dedicate more time and effort and study smart. If you build a string foundation, then mastering the language is going to be a cake walk for you.

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